Page 35 of The Marquess Wins a Wife
He made a begrudging sound of concession deep in his throat. “Fair enough,” he said. “You can be certain I’ll consider that in the future.”
In the future, she told herself as she stepped around the desk and into the path of the sun, she would be wise enough not to make such bargains with him. She hoped. Her fingers slid into his thick, dark hair, and she raked her nails along his scalp. Luke gave a muted groan of pleasure, his face relaxing. Perhaps his headache had not been a convenient invention—she hadn’t realized quite how much tension he had been carrying in his jaw until it vanished abruptly. His hair was sun-warmed, the ends smooth and sharp with his recent trim.
He breathed deep and even, as if ceding to sleep beneath her ministrations. His voice sounded sluggish when he said, “I’m writing out a list of those with whom I’ve met. You’ll let me know who is missing still.”
“Oh? And what will you do?”
“Handle them.” His shoulders drifted down from their rigid posture. “I remember this,” he said. “You did it while I was ill.”
Her fingers froze. She had—there were times that he had thrashed in the throes of his fever where only the comforting scratch of her nails through his hair had quieted him. “I thought it helped you.”
“It did. That’s why I wanted it again.”
Surely a minute had long passed by this point. But he reached behind his head and effortlessly caught her hand as she withdrew. “Thank you, Lizzie,” he said, and turned his head to place a kiss upon her wrist. “Send in Mr. Cole now, if you please.”
But it was a long moment before he released her. And longer still until her heart settled from its frantic rhythm in her chest.
∞∞∞
Something had woken him besides the ache in his back, but the moment Luke roused into consciousness, that vicious pain was all he could think of. Christ, the mattress beneath him might as well have been a slab of granite for all the comfort it provided. He twisted onto his side in an effort to alleviate the ache, but that was little better—no doubt he’d have a fierce crick in his neck come morning.
Luke craned his neck up and peered through the window, attempting to gauge the time by the position of the moon in the sky. A pointless endeavor, since there seemed to be no moon at all. But it was still full dark, and too early—or late—for anyone to be up and about. So what had woken him?
The peculiar silence of night had long settled over the house, the hush so intense that it nearly buzzed in his ears. He’d grown accustomed to the sounds of the household settling in to sleep. He’d learned the song of the thrushes winding down into the darkness, the hum of the wind rattling across the window panes.Whateversound it was that had woken him from a restless, uncomfortable sleep, it had been nothing so bucolic.
And so he lay, and waited, and strained his ears, and then—there. The slide of a booted foot across the floor. Too heavy to be Willie’s. And it certainly had not belonged to the children, or to Lizzie or Imogen.
Which could mean only one of two things: either the Talbot residence had become the victim of a housebreaker—or Papa Talbot had come home at last.
Another thump, followed by a muted hiss of, “Elizabeth, you damned faithless child—where the devil did you put itthistime?”
Papa Talbot, then. And the coward hadn’t even the courtesy to come in daylight. No; he’d arrived in the dead of night no doubt by design—to filch what he could and relieve the house of its valuables while its other occupants slept.
Luke muffled a sigh in the palm of his hand and wondered if it mightn’t be better just to let him be about his business for the moment. After all, Lizzie and Imogen had hidden the most valuable things already. Perhaps his talk with dear Papa could wait another few hours at least.
And then there was the now-familiar squeak of the study door hinges, and his eyes flashed open once more. Luke had heard that same squeak a dozen or more times today, as Lizzie had ushered tenant after tenant up to him for a proper dressing-down.
But he hadn’t handed over the money he’d collected from them. Which meant that at any moment, Papa Talbot was going to—oh,hell, no.
Luke vaulted out of bed, his aching spine forgotten as he snatched for his dressing gown, threw it on, and wrenched open his door, uncaring whom he might have roused with the sharp movement. In the darkness he strode down the hallway toward the faint light that glowed from the open door of the study.
The low, feminine hiss issuing from within drew him up short. “Give itback.”
A corresponding whine, grating in its tone: “Now, Lizzie—”
Neither noticed Luke as he stepped through the doorway. A single candle set upon the desk shed its low light upon the scene therein. Lizzie had backed a man into a corner of the room, by the point of a fireplace poker wielded like a sword in her hands. Her dark hair streamed over her shoulders, and beneath the thin white linen of her nightgown she trembled with a queer ferocity, rage written into the tense line of her jaw.
The man at the business end of her weapon resembled her not at all, though Luke thought there was something of Imogen in the tint of the hair that greyed toward the temples, something of the twins in the eyes that blinked owlishly from behind gold-rimmed spectacles. Lizzie must resemble her mother, then.
“You should count yourself lucky she chose the poker and not a pistol,” Luke drawled. “Papa Talbot, I assume?”
The man’s head swiveled toward him, but Lizzie’s did not—still she held her fierce stance, her eyes narrowed, perhaps moments away from bludgeoning her father.
“Who the devil are you, and what the hell are you doing in my home?”
The indignant question nearly provoked a startled laugh from Luke. “A passable approximation of concern, if a bit late. One would think a father whocaredwould have taken more of an interest before now.” Luke crossed the floor slowly, coming up beside Lizzie; a deliberate signal of whose defense it was to which he had come. Her shoulder was tight and tense beneath the cup of his hand. “Lizzie. Go make some tea and await me in the library.”
“He’s got Georgie’s school funds,” she said fiercely, shrugging off his hand. “I can’t let him—”
